Mexican writers

The Vasconcelos Library in Mexico City

In celebrated Chilean author Roberto Bolaño’s 1998 novel The Savage Detectives, a brilliant but depressive group of young poets roams through Mexico City, writing and drinking at bars across the frenetic capital.  Nearly all those poets, modeled on real writers, were men. Today, the Mexican literary stars frequenting the same bars are just as likely to be women.

Gabriela Juaregui

Writers like Gabriela Jauregui, the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Controlled Decay  who is now at work on her first novel, are part of a surge of young, urban Mexican women whose talent, vision, and drive are challenging the country’s traditionally macho literary culture.

Valeria Luiselli

No longer just the domain of male greats like Bolaño, Octavio Paz, and Juan Rulfo, Mexican literature has given rise to a new class of female scribes who are racking up successes at home and abroad… “There are some times when I feel compelled to say, ‘This is also Mexican,’ ” says Jauregui, who has written poems about riding the subway in Mexico City and blue-collar workers in East L.A. who dress up in ornate cowboy outfits at night and practice roping in neighborhood parks.

Chloe Aridjis

In Chloe Aridjis’s widely praised novel Book of Clouds, the female Mexican protagonist, like most immigrants, struggles with xenophobia and cultural alienation while trying to preserve her humanity in Berlin. And Brenda Lozano’s All Nothing is an intimate, humorous portrait of a girl dealing with loss and grief.  Valeria Luiselli’s essay collection, False Papers, deals with people’s relations to spaces—including her own sense of being “in between” Mexico and the United States, neither native nor foreign in either.  She ruminates on the isolation of the city: “The more nights you spend in other rooms—hotels, rented apartments, borrowed beds, sofas, shared spaces—the more you will get to know yourself.”

Brenda Lozano

Getting published in Mexico is no easy feat, especially for unknown writers: big publishers tend to focus on profit-reaping established authors. A few independent presses, like the successful Sexto Piso, have published Mexican writers in Latin America and Spain. “Many young authors first get published by small publishing houses, but their presence is very small, so the books go practically unnoticed,” says Eduardo Rebasa, a founder of Sexto Piso. “However, in recent years there has been a surge in independent publishing, with houses trying to publish quality stuff, but also trying to be successful financially and create a project that is sustainable in the long term.”

Readers can count on seeing more such works, thanks to an increase in the number of both female writing students and writing collectives for women. And their stories will continue to reflect a rapidly changing Mexico, even if most of the writers call other places home.

Excerpts from Newsweek Magazine and The Poetry Foundation.

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Tina Modotti (1896 – 1942)

Mexican peasants reading El Machete, 1928

Italian born Tina Modotti was one of the most fascinating women of the 20th century. She was a photographer, model, actress, revolutionary political activist and spy.  She became famous as a result of the photographs she created in Mexico in the 1920s and her involvement in the avant garde and revolutionary movements of her time.

Glasses, platinum print from orig. negative, c. 1924

Her photographs and life offer a unique look at the events in Mexico in the 1920s, when painters like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were alive and many intellectuals from many countries came together.  She was the photographer of choice among the muralists and helped document the work of Orozco and Rivera. In 1927 she joined the Mexican Communist Party. Between 1923 and 1930 she created a collection of sepia-tinted portraits of Mexican workers and expatriate revolutionaries that are intimate and real.  As she became more political in her life, so she increasingly devoted herself to social documentation. In 1929, she photographed the women of Tehuantepec, a series that was to become famous.

Tina Moldotti

Her personal life was dramatic and turbulent.  She was Edward Weston’s mistress and model in Mexico and learned the craft of photography from him; his influence is visible in her early work.  In 1929 her lover, Cuban revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella, was shot and killed while at her side and Modotti was accused of  his assassination.  In 1930, she was arrested as an enemy of the state and forced to leave the country.  She lived in exile in Europe and made her way to Spain during its civil war.  After the collapse of the Spanish Republican government in 1939 she returned to Mexico.  In 1942, during a taxi ride she suffered a heart attack and died at age 45.  Rumors surrounding her death have never been confirmed.

By some, Tina Modotti is seen as the heroine of the workers’ movement, by others as a classical femme fatale. Still others consider her a kind of ‘Joan of Arc with a camera…. – Reinhard Schultz, Curator of Galerie Bilderwelt Berlin

Tina Moditti website:  http://www.modotti.com/

Although her work is scarce, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City has a good collection:  http://moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=4039

Anne Menke, fashion photographer

Trunk magazine's 2011 debut issue

Trunk magazine's 2011 debut issue; photographs by Modotti (left) and Menke.

Anne Menke found inspiration for these photographs in another European photographer who made Mexico her home, Italian Tina Modotti.

Fashion magazines are rarely a part of my budget, but after spotting Anne Menke’s work, I might have to change my habits.

Mini-bio from Wikipedia:  Anne Menke was born in March 26, 1967 in Germany.  In 1987, she finished her apprenticeship in Germany and worked as an assistant in Dusseldorf for 2 years. She opened up her own studio, then moved to Paris in 1991 and worked on her own in fashion and advertising all around the world.  In 1995, she moved to New York City where she lived for several years before moving to Mexico.

She lives now between Mexico and NYC and travels the rest of the world for her shoots.

  

Photographs by Anne Menke, Myself magazine, France, May 2011 (source: http://mesfavoritethings.blogspot.com/search?q=mexic)

Slideshow of photographs (from 2011 Elle, Myself, Vogue, and Trunk magazines):

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Anne Menke is represented by Serlin Associates (everywhere but in Germany):  http://www.serlinassociates.com/#/annemenke

Trunk magazine’s website:  http://www.trunkmag.com/

Mexico – International Museum of Women

Embrace of Light by Flor Garduno

The International Museum of Women (I.M.O.W.) has numerous exhibitions and projects by and about Mexican women

“The mission of I.M.O.W. is to value the lives of women around the world.

I.M.O.W. is a groundbreaking social change museum that inspires global action, connects people across borders and transforms hearts and minds by amplifying the voices of women worldwide through global online exhibitions, history, the arts and cultural programs that educate, create dialogue and build community. With its unique focus on cultural change, I.M.O.W. advances the human right to gender equity worldwide.” 

Mexico – International Museum of Women.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique…

-Martha Graham